Paint and Plush

Madeleine Cruise is an emerging artist who creates sensational objects and abstract images that explore emotional experience in contemporary life. Driven by a desire to make complex situations tangible, her work investigates such themes as sexuality, relationships and social status, within a personal and broader social context. In a creative process that explores material equivalents between painting and sculpture, Madeleine creates immersive sensual and tactile environments for contemplation.

Pages

Glorious Descent

Thursday, August 3, 2017

We are pulled out of our homes
to travel once in a while, drawn by people, places, lovers and circumstance
into other countries and cultures. One of the places that we come across the
most difference from our homebound lives is in the visual manifestation of
faith in architecture, visual iconography and ceremony in religious and
cultural events in countries outside of our own. Ex Voto expresses the echo and
aftershock that these moments leave on our lives when we return home.

This exhibition is also about
the role of ritual and habit in everyday life and the way these practices
contribute to personal identity and purpose. Cruise’s conceptual starting point
is her experience of religious and cultural festivities abroad, however the
works really begin in the contrast between a sacred practice and a very secular
one. Through painting, Cruise raises the value of domestic chores and daily
habits to the status of important cultural rituals.

In the development of these
works Cruise explores the role of decorative systems in attributing value to
objects, the role of the artist in assigning meaning via the decision of
subject matter, as well of the role of space and how it can be a means for
people to connect with their environment.

Ex Voto is about giving
holiness to routine, to community engagement, aesthetic orderliness and ornamentation.
Carefully ordered interiors are sanctums, leisurely gardens are retreats.

Monday, July 17, 2017

Wednesday, July 12, 2017

In May 2017 I moved into a new studio space on Hunter Street, Newcastle. Formerly a cold dark concrete garage, it required some renovations, so Dad and I installed walls, warm lighting and a coat of paint to bring it up to scratch. Having worked out of my home studio for 4 years, the move made me a little apprehensive. But as I was in need of more painting space and the opportunity to hang and work on multiple works at the same time, the time had come to try something new.

before and after renovations

The space I have relocated to is beneath a contemporary dance studio and next to a former glass factory come vintage store/cafe/dread lock bar. It also backs onto the railway line which is currently receiving a make over with the construction of a new city Terminus. Probably my favourite element though, is the car park / urban garden, that is filled with stacked shipping containers that support hundreds of potted plants. Chickens and cats and now my dog Louis, free range across the asphalt picking up scraps. Resident container king: Rolo presides over the former dump zone car park. constantly organising the chaos into tidy stacks of train sleepers and barrels of glass, all the while keeping a close eye on his fermenting soup of cafe coffee and compost, that he feeds the plants.

An unexpected bonus of setting up this studio has been little community I have joined at the cafe. There are few cafes that are so conversational amongst strangers as well as regulars, which i think has to do with the influence of Naoko, the former Japanese fashion designer and very warm and charismatic lady who runs the space. Everyday, while sitting on wobbly stools and balancing coffees on ironing boards, meet an interesting combo of train station construction workers, musicians, artists and business folk. Less a business and more like a lounge room decorated with exquisite designer vintage, this place is my creative space just as much as my studio.

Friday, March 10, 2017

In November 2016 a series of disappointments had
left me feeling fed up with my life in Australia. Having tried and failed to
live the pragmatic life I threw caution to the wind and bought a last minute
ticket to Ho Chi Minh City and within a week was on a plane bound for the land
of pho.

Nine years earlier, Vietnam had been my maiden
voyage overseas, one of my first holidays alone and by far a coming of age
trip. Returning nearly a decade later, I hadn't anticipated the changes I
would appreciate in myself against the backdrop of the busy Vietnamese streets.
When I first arrived at the tender age of 20, the swarm of traffic, hectic pace
of life and gritty street culture had me stepping cautiously and with a great
sense of 'otherness'. This time round, I felt like Hanoi, my first destination,
swept me up in its street current and I swam with it. With a greater
understanding of who I was and what I could achieve, my steps were confidant.

My 2016 trip reminded me of the value of the
present, simply because it is nearly impossible to escape the vibrant activity
that is everyday Vietnamese life. Every sense is activated when walking down a
city street, there is little time to contemplate but just enough to jump out of
the way of a speeding motorbike. The eye doesn't rest, but jumps between
the patterned surfaces of roadside vendors and bicycles. Aesthetics are jarring
and odd, roadsigns confuse and the dissident bellow and cry of competing
karaoke bars keep you up at night. Yet, somehow its enlivening, its fun !
Unapologetic and not self conscious.

I travelled between Sapa in the Mountains of far North Vietnam and the region surrounding the city of Ninh Binh, about 400km south east. Between these areas I experienced the mountains and small ethnic minority villages surrounding Sapa, the 1600 limestone pillar islands of the UNESCO world heritage Ha Long Bay, the capital city of Hanoi and the farmland, cavernous mountain systems of the Red River Delta. When visiting Tam Coc I was fortunate to befriend a local hotel owner who commissioned a mural in her tropical garden courtyard. This work stay arrangement allowed me to make the small village and surrounding karst landscape home for a week. This lucky opportunity engaged me in local life and landscapes and was an empowering activity to do as a travelling artist so as to exchange with the people.

Farms of the Red River Delta 2017 - ink and acrylic on board

Detail of Tam Coc Mural

Visiting Tickets is a series of mixed media works
on paper that I made from materials and sketches gathered during my trip. I
have adopted the palette, colloquial charm, landscape views and reoccurring
motifs that I encountered on my journey. Stitched together, glued on, quickly
made or painstakingly assembled, each work presents a different reality in
Vietnamese life and my time in the country. There is a Homage to a duck
farm (where I don't know how or why the ducks don't fly away) my rendition of
street food signs, as well as works that adopt prayer flag imagery. The works
are tickets to other lands and my sense of discovery within them, as an artist
and a growing human.

Wednesday, November 16, 2016

For the past month or so I have been facilitating the very exclusive 'Art Club' for a local Newcastle Primary School. Every Wednesday morning before school a group of very wide eyed and bushy tailed students aged 6-12 gather to release their inner artistic genius, with of course a few squeals, jokes and tumbles in between.

I was excited to lead 'The Royalty Project' which involved researching different cultural leaders and their traditional dress throughout the world. We looked at Indian Princesses, medieval Queens, Sultans, Indian Chiefs and Ancient Egyptian kings, paying particular attention to the kind of head dress they would wear. We then designed our own head piece and thought about what represented our identity and what we valued. Using collage material we built our own crowns and hats before choosing a friend and painting their portrait as an 'Art Club Royal'. The process was very amusing and messy and it was interesting to see how the children combined different cultural symbols into their design (including of course pikachu).

On our final day we held an Art Club photo shoot, which involved building a throne from the donations of trash n treasure in the classroom. I was very impressed to witness one girl lay out the crown jewels that were to be dressed on the king or Queen upon ascent to the throne. One by one each student was robed in a dressing gown and dressed in jewels before assuming their rightful place on the doona covered thrown. With their hand made creations atop their head they all made very stylish and entertaining rulers.

Artist Profile

Newcastle, NSW, Australia

Madeleine Cruise studied painting at the National Art School Sydney as a student of the Reg Row art Scholarship, graduating in 2009 with first class honours and the Fraser residency prize. Her continued studio practice has been supported through residencies with First Draft, The Bundanon Trust, The Banff Centre and Marrickville Garage. Madeleine has exhibited in solo and group shows in Australia and Canada and has been a finalist in the Waterhouse, Mosman and NSW Parliament en plein air art Prizes. In 2013 Madeleine co founded NANA contemporary art space in Newcastle, a not for profit art gallery that she directed for three years. Madeleine is part of public and private art collections in Australia and Canada including Artbank Australia.